


Anachronism

by ars_belli



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-27
Updated: 2013-08-24
Packaged: 2017-12-21 12:22:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/900257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ars_belli/pseuds/ars_belli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A reminder of an earlier age, when such things as love mattered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alley_Skywalker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alley_Skywalker/gifts).



"He lies! He lies, he must, how else—No single Auror would ever be enough to take the woman I love!"  
How easy it was to kill himself! One unguarded cry, made careless through panic and agony and dread. Was that all it took to seal his fate? The thought sobered Antonin only a little, enough for rage to abandon its hold on him and to turn him loose into the arms of grief. Enough to sink to his knees and weep. Yet his executioner said nothing, did nothing, sat and smouldered in the shadows of his chair. Unperturbed by his wife's death and even less so by the admission of her lover. Perhaps, were Antonin to hurt less for _her_ , he might feel that gaze burn him, branding him for the river and the ferryman, but he did not. Let him die, if only for the chance that his soul might share the same boat across the Styx with hers! Where would she go? Tartarus? Elysium? The fact that he dared to contemplate this overwhelmed him. _Bellatrix is not coming back._ Of all of them, the Death Eaters from the First War, she deserved to live. Had she not accomplished the most in bringing about their brave new world? Yet on the brink of victory... Did it matter, when Antonin would not see it either? For what had the two of them been but one and the same? _In the Mourning Fields lie those who have killed themselves for love,_ that was surely his fate. Yet Antonin waited, and Rodolphus did nothing. Not to him, at least. 

He listened for the creak of the floor that would indicate movement, hampered by the sobs that escaped him, impervious to any wishes for dignity or self-control. Ought he not hold back his tears, rise to his feet and draw his wand? The Killing Curse struck equally well from behind. No-one would ever know whether he died facing his enemy or felled from behind, but somehow it mattered. Another secret between the two men in Bellatrix' orbit. Rodolphus' boots clunked across the floor, but still Antonin could not make himself move, as if sorrow cast its own peculiar brand of Imperius. He was utterly unresisting as the other man halted. Rodolphus stopped, bent, plucked the letter from Antonin's hands. Freed from their burden, they clutched empty air.  
"Trap," murmured Rodolphus.  
That broke the spell.  
"Of course it's a trap! 'I killed Bellatrix Lestrange! Look at how powerless you were to prevent it! Don't you have the courage to avenge her death?' Damned fool, the rebellion wants you to Apparate into the midst of them, enraged and careless and swearing vengeance for her death! Do you think it matters how many Order members die, as long as McGonagall has her glittering prize? All the world knows that Rodolphus Lestrange is invulnerable, without pity or mercy or any other human weakness apart from his wife!"  
"True," the other admitted.  
Antonin could hear him smoothing the letter's creases against his palm. A rustle of fabric heralded the concealment of the letter somewhere within his impeccable robes.  
"A trap for me,"  
He paused. Antonin's sobs had abated, but he volunteered nothing, tears trickling down his face in silence.  
"And the trap I crafted from it."

Rodolphus brushed his fingers against against Antonin's cheek. Startled, Antonin glanced upwards, to see the other man cradling his wand hand in the other, angling it so the tears glinted in the light. On a lesser mortal, his expression would betray curiosity, tinged strangely with pity, but who could tell on that inhumanly cold, masculine face? Was this some echo of _her_? Surely tears from Bellatrix were as unlikely as the sun rising in the west! Yet his treacherous mind painted the image for him: her husband's hands gentle on her face; her complexion Azkaban-pale, lightening her skin to the colour of porcelain, for once a contrast to her dark curls; her darker eyes wide and spilling with tears as Rodolphus planted kisses on her eyelids. And Bellatrix herself motionless, bereft of that central energy that drew others into her orbit like stars around a black hole; as quiescent as she might now be in death.  
"You ought to pity me," commented her widow.  
"Pity—pity _you_?"  
Astonishment rendered him speechless, but not for long.  
"You were the one she married! You chose her, took her, why did you let her—"  
"Let her!"  
How could he laugh so soon after her death?  
"Let her!" Rodolphus repeated with mirth, "Poor Dolohov, what pale shadow of my wife bedded you? Or do you mistake me for Aeolus, the god confining even the North Wind to his cave?"  
 _Poor Rodolphus_ , was indeed Antonin's next thought, if that were to be Bellatrix' epithet. Was there anything more remote from his Bella than some frigid, storm-bearing tempest? How had Lestrange missed all her light? The spark of mischief in her bottomless eyes; her lightning-flash grace in a duel; that warm, vindictively amused curl of her lip which signified a smile; surely these had not been for Antonin alone? Or was it that no-one else had had the courage to admire them? Would that lie on his gravestone?

Antonin Vesalius Dolohov  
1959 – 2006  
Brigade Leader (Senior), Intelligence Service  
Knight's Cross of Merlin's Cross  
Anti-Partisan Badge in Gold  
Wound Badge in Silver  
Murdered for a kindness


	2. Chapter 2

It was Carellus that woke her, recognised Bellatrix. The woodwinds played the triumph of the spring over the fading celli of winter, echoing in her ears as she left her bedroom. Muttering a sleepy curse, she padded over to the opposite door on the landing, stuck her wand inside and waved it in no particular direction. " _Cessi ludere_ ," she yawned, then turned to go back to sleep. Her fingers lingered on the doorknob, some sudden impulse propelling her to enter her husband's sanctuary. She pushed the door open again.

"Rodolphus?"  
The floorboards were cool under her bare feet. It was quiet, yet not oppressively so. Neither the screaming din of being in Azkaban, nor the dreadful, empty silence of dreaming there. There were fewer years between her and her imprisonment than Bellatrx wanted to admit, barely a few days until that wretched Potter brat finished his Auror qualifications. The Dark Lord had run his followers ragged setting traps for the Order, who were surely emboldened by the news. Banishing the thoughts, she curled her toes into the silk rug, examining the room. Impeccably tidy, even to her casual glance: drawers and wardrobes all closed, books alphabetised on the shelves, cushions stacked neatly on the chaise. All Rodolphus' work, for the house-elves were forbidden here as equally as Bellatrix had banished them from her room, the wards strengthened by only admitting two. _Three,_ she amended, thinking of Antonin, ignoring the faint twinge in her heart that said _sacrilege_. Perhaps it was, in here. She tried conjuring the image, placing Antonin in her sanctuary, but all that came to her mind was the room itself, looking as if the last thing to visit had been a small tempest. _The more things change..._.  
The first pillow struck her neatly in the temple.  
The second she snatched from the air and sent flying at her assailant. He caught it easily, reflexes a match for her own.  
"Bellatrix, my star, what brings you in here?"  
The laughter in Rodolphus' voice turned into a yawn. She bent to retrieve his successful missile and walked over to the bed. 

He stared up at her, not bothering to restore the pillow behind his head, not taking his eyes from her face.  
"Bellatrix," he repeated.  
Perching on the edge of the bed, she ran her eyes over him: the pallor of over-exertion not completely disguised by a tan; the deep eyes, bloodshot at the corners and smudged with darkness; his strong fingers trembling ever-so-slightly against the bedcovers, for he made no attempt to hide it.  
"You-," she punctuated every word with the pillow, "Are-," _thwack_ , "Not-," _thump_ , "Sleeping!" _smack_.  
"Evidently," he drawled, reaching to tug her down beside him and pointedly ignoring the dismay in her voice.  
"Snape's wondrous Somnium Syrup has as much effect as the average Becalming Beverage — and I've taken enough to kill a mere mortal!"  
The sigh that escaped him was involuntary, she suspected. Bellatrix lay in the crook of his arm, waiting for him to stroke her shoulders, tangle his fingers in her hair, any of the old habits when he fought a problem. His touch never came.  
"What am I to do with you?" she sighed.  
"Place me under Imperius?" he suggested archly.  
"Ha," she yawned against his shoulder, "How do you know I haven't had you that way since we married?"  
He was silent for a while at her jest. Then:  
"Perhaps you have," he whispered hoarsely.  
Startled, Bellatrix stared at him, breaking their mutual gaze just as swiftly. She wanted to see anything but those burning eyes, hollow and empty. Instead she watched his throat convulse as he swallowed, continuing:  
"I...Bellatrix, I do not...I cannot _remember_."  
She sat up, wanting to pace, movement always the answer to her troubles. Was there any greater compliment? Or any worse? Her eyes alighted on the turntable. Its magical stylus was raised, the disc spinning in silence, obedient to her earlier command. The effect was strangely hypnotic. She tore her eyes away to look at Rodolphus.  
"Carellus. _The Snow Maiden_?" she asked.  
He nodded. She traced the edge of the record with her finger, halting it.  
"I haven't heard this since our wedding. Not properly at any rate," she remarked wistfully.  
"Am I supposed to juxtapose that with the first time we heard this? That had to be the very definition of listening _improperly_."  
She smiled at his remark, trying to coax the laughter from her mind into her voice in vain. His hand disloged her own from the record, clutching it silently.

She remembered with a clarity to rival any Pensieve. The relief of secretly kicking off her heels and sinking her feet into the carpet in the Black family box, wishing that she could free her chest from its imprisonment in a new corset; the delightful tension as the orchestra and illusionists warmed up and the gas-lamps dimmed; her sisters' squabble over their shared Omnioculars. The box was flanked by the Ministerial Box itself to the right, in the very centre of the grand tier, with the Lestranges in the corresponding box on the opposite side. Those three central boxes alone were angled to provide the polite illusion of simultaneously viewing the drama unfolding both on-stage and off — no-one of any importance actually attended the opera for the _music_ — and for her pragmatic sisters, it was a spying opportunity not to be missed. Bellatrix made a cursory audit of the opposite box as the overture started: the usual visitors with the family scattered amongst them; patriarch Robespierre in the shadows at the back with his wife; his two sons in the front row, the younger lounging insolently in a corner and the elder leafing through the program with a credible display of mild curiosity. Did she alone know that he cared for it; that he indexed conductors and soloists and operatic illusion-weavers with the attention to detail that most lavished only on the shifting positions of familial boxes; that music alone softened the emotional defenses which he so easily arrayed against all other external influences? So it surprised her to no end when he suddenly glanced upwards to hand the program to a stranger, thin-faced and vaguely handsome, sporting a neatly-trimmed goatee and black tie that looked expensive but worn. Distracted, Bellatrix failed to notice that Rodolphus had aimed his wand at her until the spell hit. The incantation formed by his lips was unknown, but it should have been no surprise that Rodolphus had woven some trap for her. Over the next three hours she lost herself in it, recovering only as the last notes of the music and the illusory scene faded. The stranger glanced up from his program towards her. Fearlessly he met her eyes and refused to look away. Then he smiled.

That had been before the War, of course, some impossibily distant time that was now the realm of daydreams and shadowy nostalgia. How long had it been in their self-imposed exile?  
"I thought it might—No, I _hoped_ somehow, that something might waft from my subconscious, given the appropriate emotional triggers."  
The sudden admission of weakeness startled her. A substantial fraction of a second passed before Bellatrix concealed it with an impish grin. She bent to kiss Rodolphus fleetingly on the cheek.  
"If only you had told me, we could have re-enacted the wedding night!"  
That won her a laugh: full, genuine, for a moment perfectly like his pre-Azkaban self. His huge hands cupped her face, palms pressing against her cheeks, fingers brushing the hair at her neck. She fell gratefully into the kiss. He didn't release her after their lips parted.  
"Dearest Bellatrix, what did I do to deserve you?"  
His breath was warm against her cheek. Suddenly the prospect of returning to her bedroom was a Herculean task, all that effort to claim a cold bed and an unlighted fire. Sighing, she settled beside her husband. For a long while the pair of them watched the flames in the fireplace in contented silence. Sleep had almost claimed her before Bellatrix realised that Rodolphus' question had not been rhetorical.  
"Given time, I'm sure you will remember."  
Perhaps she would too.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Handing in my MSc thesis (and jet-lag from visiting four time zones in three days) delayed this chapter quite a lot. I hope it is finished by the time you read this! Certainly this chapter and the epilogue will be finished by the end of the week: I thoguht that I should write it with the same care as the other two chapters rather than rushing and finishing on a low note.

It was all too difficult to consider that his world might turn upside-down. Antonin stretched, listening to his bones as he realigned them with a satisfying crackle. Only an hour earlier, he had been ferociously pursued by what seemed like half of the Barcelona branch of Ministry Intelligence: the blood from that fight still wasn't off his robes and his arm flaunted a large scar from the _Sectumsempera_ which had sliced his wand arm to the bone. Purple fire played a lingering sonata of misery along every nerve, caused by some smart-arse who had devised a block for his favourite curse and ricoched it all over the room. Despite that, a hot bath was doing wonders for the rest of his by-now-minor physical injuries and a bottle of white Burgundy was starting to cast a similar effect on his mental ones. Intelligence would not — could not — come after him now without backing up their Hit Wizards with the Aurors he had just killed; his flat was Unplottable and other things besides; and the other two Death Eaters had Disapparated, charitably leaving him behind as a diversion. It was only natural that the Ministry of Magic would pursue him again; but they would be furious, outraged, nursing wounded pride; every emotion a mistake waiting to happen. He grinned and reached for the bottle again. Not even Rodolphus' favourite aphorism (or indeed any throughts of the man himself) were able to dim his sense of satisfaction. Antonin was inclined to be charitable for a few hours: after all, what Rodolphus didn't know about extracting information was not worth knowing, and all of it had been useful during his questioning of the Section Head that evening. The disappointing witch had popped her clogs before a full day was out. Rather a shame that her death had triggered an automatic assault by her entire staff of Aurors, but duelling practice was good practice however unexpected. Or whatever the injuries sustained. He closed his eyes and inhaled steam. Perhaps he would _Accio_ a book and lie here forever...

Unfortunately, fate had other ideas.

"But Master is having a _bath!_ "  
The thin voice of his elf wailed up the stairs. Antonin's eyes opened and he cautiously reached for his wand.  
"Our distinguished visitor is very unhappy with Master, Tokay is most aware of that—"  
He could just picture the rising squeaks of dismay as the elf chased after his unwanted visitor. Someone he knew, then. Or a stranger Disillusioned to be someone he knew. He silently _Accio_ ed a knife. And his robes: most undignified otherwise.  
"But Master left strict instructions that Tokay was forbidden to let anyone disturb him until—"  
The voices were louder now, approaching rapidly; the nagging conclusion in the quagmire of his mind was not. Antonin picked up the mostly-empty wine bottle and shook it quietly, cursing his foolishness. _Rodolphus_ would never have allowed himself to be found in such a weakened state. He padded silently towards the door in bare feet, positioning to strike first as the intruder opened it.  
He blinked.  
They had not opened anything in the house. The intruder hadn't bothered with the lower floor; had gone straight to the spiral staircase, whose alarm had not sounded, so she knew the ward for that; knew precisely where he was. This was someone whom he had invited into his private rooms, who had gained his trust. He took a soft breath. There were only two people whom he had ever permitted to step in here and he wished to face neither of them.  
The bedroom door bounced against the wall. Antonin steadied the spells in his mind. _Rodolphus or Bellatrix?_ Then a sharp, stabbing pain siezed his mind and he knew nothing.

The sound that woke him was the melodious clink of glass meeting glass.  
"Hhnnnnggg," he managed.  
Everything hurt again.  
"Darling Antonin! So kind of you to join me!" chirped a voice.  
"Glarrrrg," _cough_ , "get out," _splutter_ , "and...Bella..."  
His voice trailed off in a fit of coughing. Antonin opened his eyes cautiously. His vision splintered into six versions of Bellatrix' long-fingered hands. He felt the rim of a wine glass beneath his lip.  
"Drink it."  
He paused. She pressed the glass insistently against his skin.  
"You'll feel better. I promise!"  
He swallowed obediently. Then he leaped to his feet and swayed blindly for the bathroom. Beneath the sound of him being violently ill, Antonin swore that he heard amused laughter. He drowned it out by sticking his head under the tap.  
"Poor Antonin!"  
She was there, holding a towel. He grabbed it and attempted to wipe his face, still seeing double.  
"What is Merlin's name was that?" he spluttered.  
Bellatrix took the towel from him. He abandoned his futile attempts and let her wash him. A Slytherin apology. "Tea, mixed with _Jaegermeister_. And pepper; rather a lot, actually."  
"That is not what I meant! What was that earlier, concerning you barging into my safehouse without so much as a by-your-leave! I was convinced that you were Rodolphus and that I ought to blow your head off!"  
"That...would be one solution to your problem," she uttered cautiously.  
"Quite." He sank his head in his hands, elbows resting against the marble basin. "One for which you would never forgive me."  
Rodolphus' wife was silent. She gripped his arm firmly.  
"Come; sit down. I'll make some tea."  
Antonin allowed himself to be led into his bedroom. He sat, watching her passively. At least what he saw was singular. _You know, when there are two of you, your image is not twice as beautfiul,_ he considered confiding. No: she would surely kill him for it — if he were fortunate!  
"No _Jaegermeister_ in my tea this time?" he questioned wryly.  
His only reply was a warm, throaty laugh. 


End file.
